Birthright of Passage

  Yes, it’s that simple. One woman – UCSD student Michelle Kerner – relates how a free 10-day trip to Israel transformed her sense of Jewish identity... and her self.
By Patricia Morris Buckley

  Close your eyes and imagine Israel. What do you see? For me the picture is clear. As if my mind were a canvas painted with soft colors, I imagine the breathtaking view from the vantage point of the Haas Promenade. There are no words to describe the images invoked here and it can never be captured in a camera lens; it is a feeling, as if the city speaks. It is here that my journey began.

  University of California, San Diego, junior Michelle Kerner penned those words in The Jewish Starr, a campus publication for Jewish students she helped found. She is describing the beginning of the birthright israel experience that transformed her life.
Supported by philanthropists in the U.S. and the Israeli government, Taglit-birthright israel provides free trips to Israel for Jews ages 18-26 who have never been to the Holy Land. Since its inception five years ago, nearly 80,000 young adults have made their first – and with hope, not last – trips to Israel.

   Prior to her trip in 2003, Kerner was an unlikely candidate to embrace her Judaism. A California beach blonde, she grew up in a nonobservant household in the San Fernando Valley. As a preteen she begged her parents to attend a Catholic middle and high school because her friends went there. After her bat mitzvah, she stopped going to Hebrew school and rarely attended synagogue.

   “At school, I had always been the token Jew,” Kerner, 20, says. “But all during my life, I knew that Judaism was important because I was always surrounded by religion, just not my own.” Her father had been raised in a “somewhat observant” home and her mother converted to Judaism when they were married. Yet, “our home was fairly nonobservant,” she recalls. “We didn’t even do much for the High Holy Days. I felt disconnected from the Jewish community.”

   When she entered UCSD as an English literature major three years ago, a friend who signed up for a birthright trip encouraged her to do the same. At first she didn’t believe that the 10-day trip to Israel would be free, that there must be some catch. But the catch never came.

 


   “The trip was one of those things that sneak up on you, like mid-terms,” she says. “I had the trip on my calendar, then suddenly it was that weekend and I was packing. The reality of the situation didn’t sink in until I was on the plane and there were people around me speaking Hebrew.

   “I remember looking over [Jerusalem] and that view put it all in perspective,” she adds. “It made me want to know more about what it all meant. I had always called myself Jewish, but I didn’t know what that meant.”

   To say that birthright changed my life would be an understatement. Somewhere between the hotel and the Dead Sea I found myself, and 20 years of questioning my identity was answered in a mere 10 days.



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